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This is my entry for the Information Finding Championship with the topic "Laughter" run by @ifc and @apolymask.

This was a pretty interesting topic, and one that I mulled over for a quite a few days! I couldn't settle on a particular topic that really took would take my fancy and that I thought that I could run with... and I was pretty sure that I would have to skip this round. However, this morning, I did think of a possible angle! So, I'm in with a just in time entry...

Why Am I Laughing?

In my day job as a musician, I often find myself laughing (either in rehearsal or on stage in a performance. Some of the time it is a shared joke with another colleague or just reveling in the challenge of navigating a particularly difficult passage! These are the times when the laughter (if it is in performance, it is more muted!) is quite transparent and the reason is more intelligible to everyone else!

However, there are times when I laugh at little things in the music or that other musicians are doing that only seem to make any sense to me! I think these little personal secret gems are quite important for a musician (artist), as it this continual joy of disconnected discoveries that helps keep everything fresh for us! Especially with pieces that we play quite often!

So, in this post, I'm sharing two little moments in two Classical pieces that I play quite often which I find totally hilarious... which no one else seems to!

Toy Trains

The Brandenburg concerto #4 is one of the great Baroque masterworks by JS Bach, featuring a solo violin and two recorders. Now, recorders aren't really my favourite instruments... however, I do have colleagues that play it really very very well, so this isn't a comment on their playing ability and skills!

However, in this Concerto, there is a spot at around 12:53 where the two recorders play a series of notes in imitation to the string group. This is the spot where I have a touch of the uncontrollable giggles, as they really really sound like toy trains! Take a listen for yourself!

I've told one of my recorder colleagues this... and now every time in a performance of this piece, she turns around at that moment and glares at me (in a nice way...)! It's the only thing that she is thinking about now when she hits that spot!

Australia!

This particular example is a bit of an embarrassing one... It occurs during the John Passion of JS Bach, which is one of the settings of the Easter story of Christ according to the gospel of St. John. Even worse, this is the moment when Jesus is on the cross... about to expire.

The troublesome bit is at around 3:05, when the alto transitions into the faster section. with a bar that sounds very familiar to me as an Australian.... it is the first little part of the Australian national anthem (in the youtube link, it is where they start singing around 0:18).

Needless to say, this is a spot where it is really bad bad bad form to be smiling or laughing out loud....

Wrap up!

So, if we are lucky, we all have these little moments in our lives... where we are completely caught unaware by a completely random connection which makes something quite funny for us and us alone! Far from being a bad thing, this is a great and human thing (in moderation...) which allows us to find joy and light in the most unusual circumstances!